Amazon first crossed a $1 trillion market capitalization in 2018, shortly after Apple.
Amazon reached the milestone on September 4, 2018, when its shares rose above the required price during Nasdaq trading. Apple had reached the same level about one month earlier, making Amazon the second U.S. company to do so.
The valuation reflected Amazon’s expansion from an online bookstore into a broad commerce, logistics, cloud-computing, advertising, and entertainment company. Amazon Web Services was especially important because cloud infrastructure generated substantial growth and profit.
Market capitalization measures the value of Amazon’s publicly traded equity, rather than the value of its warehouses, inventory, or annual sales alone. The milestone also did not mean Amazon received $1 trillion in new cash. It meant investors’ combined valuation of its outstanding shares reached that figure.